Escaping flatland
From this article, I learned that a good information design must have three elements: high quality maps which combine substance, statistics and design; diverse details which enable readers to understand the main idea in shortest time; several layers of close reading combined with an overview data from engineering surveys. Otherwise, the whole data display can turn into a chartjunk which is inaccurate, exaggerate and has little to do with the main content. I think this article is very useful especially in data visualization.
Power of representation
There is an old Chinese saying that “The palest ink is better than the best memory” which indicates how limited our memory is. By using some cognitive artifacts like experiential and reflective artifacts in representation, we can strengthen our mental power and be smarter. Experiential artifacts are easy for us to understand, however, reflective ones are not, because they require a lot of mental procedure. From this article, I learned that how powerful representation is, and what elements make a representation good. And I was totally agree with the sentence that “There is no single format can ever be correct for all purpose.” because in order to consider what type of representation we use, we need to think about the role of our readers, the purpose of our representation and the task to be performed. Also, I was very surprised when he said “numbers are really not natural, they are reflective tools, not experiential ones”, I mean, we see and deal with numbers everyday, I don’t think numbers are reflective. And then I realized I was wrong, as he said “it takes years of study in childhood to become proficient at arithmetic”. And maybe this is the reason why common sense and logic are often wrong.
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